Nothing like a trip back home to get your mood out of the gutter! I am flying back on the 2nd and everyday some more energy fills the deepest crevices of my shallow existence. Everyday I plan a little more of the things I want to do when I get home. I chalk out in my mind the places I want to visit with my family. Or where and when I want to just hang out with friends. And all the food I'll savor.
It's the little satisfactions that you find at home that light up everything. That make it all worth the while, and I have always craved and searched for these small satisfactions. Like that perfect piece of cheese cake.
Our ability to associate and then dissociate from things around us astounds me. Traveling back home is traveling to the comfort of all the loving associations you grew up with, and that's very easy to do. Even someone who hated his/her home and moved out before you could say eighteen can adjust back home easily. But we're equally good at dissociating ourselves from our homes when the need arises to pack up the bags and move on to a new frontier, always with the hope of coming back home. I think it's this hope of coming back home that gives a soldier the strength to pursue something totally senseless at the war front.
I leave my home assisted by this energy to pursue something a little less senseless, the pursuit of job satisfaction. See for me a job cannot be just something to make ends meet. It has to be more. Believe me I've tried that work to live approach, but I can't work it. I always lose interest and all willingness to work myself towards anything, and eventually it's not the job that suffers (for if there is a deadline, then it would be met), but my personal life that goes down the drain! So it's this juggling act that needs to be conducted while balancing yourself on a thin rope, crossing the Niagara falls.
But my home calls out to me everyday now, and every night I dream of it. The cool breeze on our rooftop, the comfort of my real bed, the kindness in the eyes of my family, and that comfortable feeling of hanging out with friends who've grown around you, and have seen you grow all the way.
Ever wonder why movies about coming home are always more soothing then the movies about leaving home. Because no matter what happens, unless you live in Jack the Ripper's street, that journey back is always going too be good, sweet, and nurturing.
So depressed by this world (there are still people dying everyday in the middle east, and no one seems to care), and bit by a goose (yes, true story, no one else got bit by a goose at Duke Gardens but me this Sunday), I am actually looking forward to something. Looking forward to the warm embrace of my home...
I'm leaving on a jet plane...
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1 comment:
What a lovely farewell post, Fraz! How true are your observations. I am sad to say that this place in which I now reside is as far from home as possible, regardless of my attempts to make it one. May these two years pass quickly! Having no job yet and becoming increasingly aware of the apathetic attitudes of Ann Arbor's residents has zapped my energy. I am renewed by your pledge to not take the "work to live" approach, though, so keep fighting the good fight and email me when things settle down. -Vovvi
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